Pumpkin Plate Math

November is flying by! Thanksgiving is just around the corner. This time of year is so incredibly busy but never fear – this week’s Tuesday Teaching Tip will have your students learning with seasonal fun in no time at all.

You’ll need some seasonal plates – these are from the trusty Dollar Tree. First write the numbers 1-10 on your plates.

What can you do with your numbered pumpkin plates? Well, for starters, you can work on counting. If that’s still pretty tricky, you could add dot stickers or simply draw on the right number of dots/pumpkins so that children who could use more support can work on one-to-one correspondence along with number recognition and counting. These pumpkin counters came from the Dollar Spot at Target and were $3 for 150. If you can’t find them, you could use small erasers, glass vase fillers, lima beans (spray) painted orange, pumpkin seeds or these bingo markers would work great, too.

Of course, simply counting to 10 may be too easy for at least some of your children. You can easily use the same plates (and the same counters, of course) and add some clothespins labeled with addition (or subtraction) problems. Program another set of clothespins with dots and it becomes easy to provide students with a differentiated activity where they can all work together at their own level.

Happy counting! If you wind up using this idea, we’d love to hear about it!